TWO ON A TOWER.




I

On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable
world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun
shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a
hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melchester Road, which
the carriage had hitherto followed, was joined by a drive that led
round into a park at no great distance off.

The footman alighted, and went to the occupant of the carriage, a
lady about eight- or nine-and-twenty. She was looking through the
opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch of
country beyond. In pursuance of some remark from her the servant
looked in the same direction.

The central feature of the middle distance, as they beheld it, was a
circular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself
in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding
arable by being covered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one
size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the
hill they grew upon. This pine-clad protuberance was yet further
marked out from the general landscape by having on its summit a